Despite projections of a new cold war, the United States remains the power all turn eyes towards -- even those who are opposed to it, writes Azmi Bishara Already by the end of Clinton's second term the world had begun to weary of the "mono-polar order". After direct military intervention in Yugoslavia, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq (during the war to liberate Kuwait, the subsequent period of sanctions and the dual containment of Iraq and Iran) many, including French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, had begun to caution against the dangers of "hyperpower". Such sentiments were being voiced in the late 1990s, a period of Russian political and economic decline and a general disinterest in international politics in Beijing as it raced to build the Chinese economy. In other words, the major factor that had once united Western powers and their allies, this being the USSR and the "communist peril", no longer existed. It had vanished with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In the opinion of European politicians as well as many liberal theorists, and in the discourse of what has become mistakenly termed "civil society" organisations or activists, building a new world order on the ruins of the Cold War and the balance of terror between the capitalist and soviet camps entailed a partial voluntary relinquishment of national sovereignty (such as the members of the EU agreed to, for example). This relinquishment, in their vision of a new utopia following the end of the bipolar order, would be in favour of universal principles, such as the rule of international law, human rights and environmental protection. Thus, if economic globalisation, the world market, the hegemony of such arms of the American economy as the World Bank and IMF, and the reproduction of the relationship of dependency between the periphery and the centre through the dissemination of new consumerist needs and the withholding from the periphery of the means and circumstances to develop a productive economy, was one side of the process of globalisation, the marginalisation of nationalism and national sovereignty in favour of general universal principles must be the other. Such was the discourse throughout the 1990s. It was all part and parcel of the new global order, which was a composite that offset the dangers of a single pole and checked the development of an imperial system capable of imposing its will around the world and on the countries that revolve in its orbit. With universal principles in mind, work began on drafting the Kyoto Protocol, with the aim of reducing greenhouse gasses in order to prevent the erosion of the ozone layer and global warming, and on establishing an international criminal court, after an episode of international self-flagellation (for some sincere, for others not) over the massive genocide in Rwanda that took place in the broad daylight of the globalising world. Naturally, too, there was endless talk in the corridors of the UN over renewing and expanding the treaty banning nuclear testing and over signing another preventing the use of landmines. There also arose a new -- and seemingly boundless -- academic industry founded upon the fraudulent redefinition of the term "civil society". Instead of a society consisting of individuals in the state but separate from it, and instead of a strong society that reproduces itself through the mechanisms of a market economy that finances the state through taxes, and that counterbalances the state by means of a public non-governmental realm and democratic institutions, "civil society" was reduced and distorted to mean NGOs that are funded by donor institutions based in major industrialised nations. Thus, the latest evolution in voluntary societies and federations in the democratised industrialised West were airlifted to societies in which civil society and public scrutiny of the state had not even taken their first autonomous steps. Some were so transported by the utopia at hand that they believed that the end of the bipolar order put paid to Israel's strategic function. For proof, they were able to point to the US-led war against Iraq in 1991, in which not only did Israel not intervene but was ordered by the US to stay put even after Iraq fired missiles at it. Hopes, therefore, ran high that the international community would impose a peace agreement on the "disputants in the Middle East" via the mediation of the US, in whose interests it was to eliminate tensions in this region. And as negotiations moved from Madrid to Oslo, Egypt, which was much relieved to have shifted over to the right side in the middle of the Cold War, could now look forward to being joined by the rest of Arab officialdom in bilateral agreements with Israel. We all know what happened next. Pakistan joined the nuclear club and Iran hastened to catch up. The Arab wager on peace negotiations fell through as the negotiating process fell victim to the balances of power and to the total mutual understanding between the US and Israel. The Arabs had put their faith in the US's good intentions. Israel put its faith in the power of might and creating new realities on the ground, and it proved to the Arabs that it had not lost its function and, moreover, that it meant much more to the US than just its function. The Palestinians, meanwhile, plunged into a negotiating tunnel with no light at the other side. Now they are split down the middle and the Palestine Liberation Organisation leadership is bending over backwards to appease Israel in order to secure enough support to hold out in -- and win -- the internal Palestinian power struggle. This problematic idealistic vision of the post-Cold War world included a victorious camp that regarded itself as inherently good and right and that believed that its values (after subjecting them to a process of gross oversimplification and an even more stringent process of selectivity) should be bestowed upon all mankind. It also included the possibility that this power would assume the role of an international constabulary to enforce the new and promising "international legitimacy". It was a power with a historic mission, bearing its creed with one hand and a sword in the other. It was the self-appointed natural heir of the Roman Empire. One fact that is frequently overlooked is that American opinion at the time was divided in a way contrary to its familiar pattern today. Then it was the conservatives who were conventionally against overseas interventionism in Europe and the Middle East, though they were considerably more tolerant when it came to intervention in the Pacific and Southeast Asia and in South America. The collapse of the Soviet Union increased their wariness in this regard. They were happy that the US had emerged victorious from its war with the USSR, but now it was time to tend to affairs back home. "Nation building" overseas was none of their business. There is endless testimony to this attitude in the media of the time. But it is particularly interesting to note that when the conservative- neoconservative alliance unleashed its war on Iraq in 2003, Democratic Senator Joseph Biden (Obama's running mate, who voted wholeheartedly in favour of the Iraq war when it was put to a vote in Congress in October 2002, but is now using the war in Iraq as a mainstay in his attacks against the Republican administration) could not conceal his doubts about the neoconservatives' intentions. He feared that, after toppling Saddam Hussein, they would not want to follow through with the process of "nation-building" (Robert Kagan, "The September 12 Paradigm", Foreign Affairs, September-October 2008). Indeed, conservatives of the Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld stripe did represent, in general, a foreign policy outlook founded upon what they regarded as the bases of US vital interests, notably oil and American homeland security. They certainly did not see America's role as enforcing UN resolutions or promoting the principles of justice, international law and democracy, or what has been referred to since the US intervention in the Philippines and Cuba in the 19th century as "nation-building". It was the liberals who pressed for the intervention in Kosovo and the blockade of Iraq and, later, they were some of the most ardent supporters of the invasion of Iraq. Although some of the leftovers from the Bush Sr administration were disappointed that after the coalition ousted Iraq from Kuwait in 1991 it did not follow through and topple the Saddam regime (and, accordingly, formed such lobbies as the Project for the New American Century that took every opportunity to call for war against Iraq), until 11 September 2001 opinion in the US was the reverse of what we see today. The conservatives were opposed to intervention in the name of nation building, in the Balkans, in Haiti and in Iraq. They were dissatisfied with Clinton's policies in all these regions. They were not even all that enthusiastic about the US's active involvement in the so-called Middle East peace process. Therefore, the opening period of the Bush administration, up to 11 September, was isolationist and non- interventionist. The US withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol and from the Palestinian- Israeli "peace process". Only after 11 September, when armed with the justifications of homeland security, the war against terror, securing the sources of oil in the Gulf, controlling energy resources for Europe and Japan and even China, and ensuring Israeli security, did the Bush administration beat the warpath to Afghanistan and then to Iraq. Rumsfeld and Cheney, former CEO of Halliburton, were naturally very keen to come up with reasons for invading Iraq, but these reasons did not include nation building. Their reluctance on that score was demonstrated by the relatively few forces Rumsfeld sent over to begin with, and the lack of a plan -- or even conception -- for how to handle Iraq after toppling the existing regime. The conservatives went to war after disseminating (with the active complicity of the liberal press) a series of stupendous lies, none of the fabricators of which have been brought to account in spite of their having served as a cover for mounting a war of aggression, destroying a nation, and perpetrating countless crimes against humanity. What is really disturbing about the lies manufacturing industry, whose produce is so easily and broadly disseminated by virtue of the US's domination over the media and entertainment business, is that exposure never prevents it from trying and, most often, succeeding again to dupe the public into believing a humanitarian guise for waging an imperialist war. One recalls Bush Sr's frequent and vivid repetition of the claim that Iraqi soldiers had killed 318 infants in a hospital in Kuwait (with an emphasis on that precise figure of 318). The claim was based on the testimony given by a Kuwaiti woman before a congressional hearing to the effect that she had seen these horrors with her own eyes. It later came to light that this witness was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Washington and that her entire testimony was a complete fabrication concocted by the Washington-based public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, which had been commissioned by the government of Kuwait to help persuade the American public of the need to go to war. The company fed witnesses their lines and trained them on how to perform before their congressional audiences. One can go on ad nauseam citing instances of such campaigns of deceit using the "respectable" press to build up a climate of hysteria and rally public opinion behind a war and, simultaneously, to refute opposing opinions and ostracise those who espouse them. Then, if the war effort is blessed with victory, the media will shower the administration with praise. But if not, it will condemn the administration with the same fervour while exempting itself from any culpability. What concerns us here is that the US's imperial "privilege" of being able to spread lies so easily by virtue of its domination over the means to shape tastes and control moods and to produce tears and create fears is still very much intact whatever one might say about the rising power of Russia and China. Here, in the industry of promoting cultures, fads and fictions, as well as in the industries of computers, advanced scientific research, military technology and the Internet, the mono-polar order still prevails and holds sway, even over the minds of opponents to the US. The world has never known an imperial regime that held such a totalitarian grip over the media.
